Well, it’s been a bit since my last post. I have to admit that I’m struggling with the cold and the wet and knowing that we’ve got several more months of this before we come out on the other side. Looking at it with an unbiased eye, we’ve actually had pretty decent weather so far this season, but the rains have hit the last couple weeks and I’m just feeling pretty downcast.

We also haven’t been able to make any real progress on any of our boat projects over the past month because we had some other obligations which took up several weekends last month. I just can’t shake that I’m feeling pretty stagnant right now and down in the dumps.

One Step Closer to Cruising

We did make one decision last month that moves us a little closer to casting off.

Brenden takes off for his first commute by bike.

As you know, for years we have been a three-car family (crazy, I know). But in October we sold my Mazda. Brenden and I decided it’s time to start cracking down even more- we’re going to be selling another one of our cars.

In order to do so, Brenden will start commuting to work by bicycle. We bought him a bike and he’s working up to riding it several days a week to work. We should have done this last summer so that he could have at least started his bike commuting in the nice weather, but we didn’t so here we are.

So, right now, we’re trying to decide which car to sell next.

We’ve got a 2005 Dodge Durango which is my primary driver. It is owned outright but does have higher mileage and is less fuel efficient. We could likely sell it for about $4,000.

Brenden’s primary vehicle is his 2013 Ford Fusion. We justified purchasing this car several years ago so that Brenden could use it for driving Uber. We owe about $8,800 on it and could likely only sell it for about $6,500 or maybe $7,000. So we would take a hit on it but it would knock out one of our bigger debts if we did sell it. If we did keep the Fusion, Brenden could continue driving for Uber occasionally for extra income, but the reality is that he hasn’t been doing it that often recently so it’s not really a justified expense anymore.

Hit me up with your opinion on which car we should ditch next.

I’ll also get my November Budget Report out to you guys soon. The scheduling was weird on finalizing my data collection but I’m nearly ready to sit down and write that post now. So watch for that to post in the next few days.

As always, thanks for reading. Send me some encouraging words to help me get through these wintertime blues. Thanks!  ~Rachel

I’ll end the post with some pretty pictures that I’ve managed to capture over the past month. When it’s not rainy, it really is quite pretty here in the PNW, even in the winter.